THE POISON GARDEN website

Pontifications on Poison

Being some ramblings on events associated with poisonous plants.

Wednesday 7th December 2011

I’m aware that websites are available all around the world
so, if you’re reading this in the USA, you might be surprised to
learn that I’ve only just become aware of the ‘Fast and Furious’
story. But, it does seem to be one of those stories that started
fairly small and only slowly are its full details and the awful
consequences becoming available.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
(known at the ATF rather than the BATFE) says that it is ‘A
unique law enforcement agency in the United States Department of
Justice that protects our communities from violent criminals,
criminal organizations, the illegal use and trafficking of
firearms, the illegal use and storage of explosives, acts of
arson and bombings, acts of terrorism, and the illegal diversion
of alcohol and tobacco products’.

In 2006, it set up ‘Operation Gunrunner’ with the objective
‘to deny Mexican drug cartels the “tools of the trade,” which
they employ to murder rival drug traffickers, civilians, as well
as political, military, and law enforcement figures’. At some
point, though when and by whose authority is still unclear, the
Phoenix office of the ATF set up Operation Fast and Furious with
the intention of helping Operation Gunrunner achieve that
objective.

Taking what now seems to be such a spectacularly bad idea
that it is hard to see how any rational person could ever have
thought it was a good idea, the ATF decided that the perfect way
to identify how guns were reaching the Mexican drugs cartels was
to supply the guns itself.

It used so-called ‘strawman purchasers’ to buy weapons from
gun shops in Phoenix with the intention of following their
journey across the border and identifying and arresting the
traffickers. The only problem is that the operation reached an
amazing scale with around 2,000 weapons being purchased and,
current information suggests, over 1,300 of those going missing
with the ATF having no idea who now has them.

It often happens with these sorts of incidents that the cover
up becomes worse than the original issue and it is certainly
true that there have been denials that have had to be retracted
as more information comes to light, there have been staff moved
sideways and there are beginning to be resignations all
suggesting that the investigation of who knew what and when will
become the centre of the story.

It also happens that stories like this get politicised and
there have been signs that, because Republicans latched onto the
story as a stick with which to beat the Obama administration,
some sections of the media have soft-pedalled on their
investigations on the assumption that it was just a political
red herring.

But it would be a shame if politics and the cover up become
the focus because the original story needs to stay at the centre
of attention. Not content with having drug laws that create
incentives for criminal gangs to form and then fight over their
businesses, persons, so far, unknown within the ATF and, quite
possibly in the Justice Department and higher in the US federal
government structure, thought it would be a good idea to use
federal funds to provide the weapons for these gangs to fight
with.

I make no apology for writing again (previous entries
here
and here)
about the 40,000 plus deaths in Mexico in recent years as a
result of the complete failure of the world’s prohibition regime
for drugs. Remember, as I quoted above, the ATF says Operation
Gunrunner is aimed at reducing the numbers of murders of ‘rival
drug traffickers, civilians, as well as political, military, and
law enforcement figures’. It is an outrage that some, almost
certainly unknowable, number of those murders have resulted from
the use of weapons provided by the agency itself.